History Maker: Dilip Sanghvi – Founder The Sun Pharmaceuticals

April 23, 2019

Accordingly, Dilip Sanghvi is an Indian billionaire businessman and one of the country’s richest people and he founded Sun Pharmaceuticals. Reportedly the Government of India awarded him the civilian honor of the Padma Shri in 2016. India Today magazine ranked him #8th in India’s most powerful people of 2017 list and also started by helping his father in his wholesale generic drugs business in Kolkata. Furthermore, it was during this work that he thought of manufacturing his own drugs instead of selling others’ products.

Apparently, Shanghvi started Sun Pharmaceutical Industries with a capital of Rs. 10,000 in 1982 at Vapi, with one psychiatry drug. In 1997, Sun acquired Caraco Pharma, a loss-making American company, with the aim of expanding Sun’s reach in the United States. Perhaps Sun also acquired Israel’s Taro Pharma in 2007 and later Shanghvi stepped down as chairman and CEO in 2012 and chose Israel Makov, formerly CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, as his successor; Shangvi became managing director. Previously in April 2014 Sun, Ranbaxy, and Daiichi Sankyo (the majority shareholder in Ranbaxy) agreed that Sun would acquire all outstanding shares of Ranbaxy for $3.2billion in Sun stock and that Sun would take on $800M in Ranbaxy debt; the deal closed in March 2015 and made Sun the largest drug company in India and fifth largest in the world, and made Daiichi the second largest shareholder in Sun.

Moreover, as of January 2019, he had a net worth of $8.6 billion. Further in January 2018, the Indian government appointed Shanghvi to the Reserve Bank of India’s 21-member central board committee. Also, he is chairman of the board of governors at IIT Bombay and he was made a trustee of the Rhodes Scholarship program at Oxford University in 2017. – India Herald